SC - Period cookshop at Pennsic?

[Debra Hense]

I'm reading and reading all these wonderful ideas and comments about the cookshop.  And I find that I am thinking along different lines than others.  I think we can focus/feature a different cuisine and century every day.  Most of the recipes that I have been studying from the different cultures/centuries are the same basic foods, with regional variations in flavorings (spices/herbs/whether wine or vinegar is used...etc.).   Almost every single recipe book contains recipes for various roasted meats, served with a pepper sauce, a garlic sauce, a green sauce.  Some of the ingredients may be slightly different, this one uses a yellow pepper sauce, that one a brown pepper sauce.  But, basically, all are just minor variations of the same recipe. 

Myself, I think that having a different culture/century focus would be a great selling point for some of the people attending Pennsic.  Something along the lines - I'm eating at the xxx Inn ( I don't know what you're going to call the inn)  today because they're serving what my personae would have eated in period.    I can envision others saying - well, I tried 14th C. French yesterday, today they're doing 15th C German.  I want to taste the differences myself.  I can imagine not a few future feast stewards thinking after they've sampled several countries/centuries, I like this country/century.  I think I'll base my next feast on it.  Or, someone who has not yet decided on a specific personae saying I think I'll base my personnae in this country/century because I love their cuisine.

However, it may be that the people of the Kingdom of Calontir (where I reside) are different in that so many of our people  already know that period food tastes good, and so many of our cooks already make the effort to cook feasts using period recipes. And, in the past year or so, focusing on using recipes from a single century/country.   So, I'm perhaps biased when I hear people on this list saying, we want to educate the masses to get them to admit that period foods taste good.  I don't see the masses as needing that education.  They already know it tastes good.  Some of them just may not get enough of it in their kingdoms/or areas where they live.

While I noticed that this attitude of period food doesn't taste good was definetly more prevelant 10 years ago, and even as few as 5 years ago.  Now, except for isolated instantances, it is that period food is okay.  So, I feel that some of us on this list, just haven't let our perceptions catch up to reality, and instead are using the few naysayers to reinforce what may be now an outdated perception.  I know that I have been guilty of just this thing on many occassions.  I hear two or three persons say something against this or that, and I expand it in my mind to say the majority, or at the very least, lots and lots, of people feel this same way.  When in fact, it may just be those same two or three people.

Of, course, I cannot speak for other peoples kingdoms, or experiences.  So, all of what I've said may only pertain to my experiences in Calontir.  

Sorry to bore on...But, I really don't think we need to dismiss the idea of foods specific to country/century different each day as being undoable.  It is very doable.  Especially when we consider how many recipes and whole portions of recipe books turn up again and again in different countries/centuries.  Sometimes, because of the many similarities I wonder if it all just started with one cookbook, and was spread and added onto from there on out.  

Respectfully, 
Kateryn de Develyn